Tuesday, September 30, 2014

As many of you know, in addition to being an artist, I'm also a Magician! I'm really lucky to be friends with Jeff Prace, one of the smartest magicians I've ever met! Recently Jeff came up with a great magic trick where the logo from a borrowed Bic Lighter appears on his own lighter. Jeff asked me to help him come up with some packaging for this trick so he could give it out at a lecture he had in August.

Previously Jeff had me paint a concept art piece for him for a trick he's working on and he wanted another hand painted image for the packaging. I thought it might be interesting to see the evolution of the packaging from start to finish.

As you can see it went through several iterations before we arrived at the one Jeff liked the best! Sometimes it was as simple as changing a font, other times it was just moving something over a few pixels.

If you're interested in Jeff's magic, you can check it out at his site here!

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Since the last time I posted about Shaken, a lot has happened! As you can see we now have one of our characters fully modeled and textured! The model was done by the amazing James Bridges and the textures were done by the fantastic Ward Silverman. Additionally, we've begun to work on storyboards for the film. Now while I won't be able to show you all of them anytime soon, I may post a few TINY sneak peeks in the future! I'm super excited about this project and I can't wait to share it with you all!

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

I've decided to try something new on my blog and interview fellow artists. Now awhile back I did a blog post where I mentioned my friend JP. I met JP while at UCF and he is hands down one of the most talented artists I know! Recently he launched a Kickstarter for a comic book series he's trying to launch! I had the opportunity to catch up with JP and learn a little bit more about him and this project!

JP has been a freelance artist for over ten years, however during this time, all of his work was done for clients. He had his own ideas and stories but never really had a chance to develop them. Back in 2011 he did a fanart piece called "Ronin of the Mushroom Kingdom." It was 2AM and he had this idea of doing an Alternate Universe piece of some of the characters from Mario. He thought of different places that this universe could talk place in and looked at
the characters to come up with ideas. Eventually, after looking at the character Toad, he thought of Asian rice hats and decided to make Toad's head into a hat. From there he
decided to go with a ronin samurai. Now that he had his concept, he needed someone to be the enemy. Initially he pictured Bowser as a dragon, but then after looking at Bowser's design, he thought it would make some really cool samurai armor.

The original print that inspired the Kickstarter.

JP's work has won several awards and was even featured on Buzzfeeds "Top 30 Fan Art of 2013." One piece that was particularly popular was the "Ronin of the Mushroom Kingdom" piece. Wherever he went, people would ask him if it was going to spawn a game or a book. Since so many people were requesting this, he decided to make it a reality. At Megacon 2013, a writer friend, J Huff, saw how popular the print was and decided to work with JP on the comic. JP has the whole series planned out, hoping to lead to a graphic novel. The story is split into three acts, of three issues each. He hopes that this Kickstarter can make this project a reality, as this is not the only thing he has planned.

The first issue of the comic is a background issue, to set the tone of the world and establish the major players of the series. The second issue is where the story begins to pick up. The comic focuses on a character named "Toshi" who was inspired by Toad. Fans of the games will find many references and inside jokes throughout the series, as this is inspired by the world of Mario.